This application is based on and incorporates herein by reference Japanese Patent Applications No. 2000-206608 filed Jul. 7, 2000 and No. 2001-1365 filed Jan. 9, 2001.
The present invention relates to a control information output apparatus and information system for outputting control information to operate each apparatus corresponding to individual situations.
In recent years, with rapid progress of computer systems, various apparatuses and devices are controlled with computers. For example, almost all home electric appliances such as television receiver, video tape recorder, electric refrigerator, electric rice cooker, air-conditioner, audio device and game machine are provided with a computer system such as microcomputer. These home appliances are operated with a program executed in the computer system. Moreover, it is now possible to realize a route guidance with a navigation system and facility retrieval with the Internet system in a vehicle compartment.
With such a computer control, automated process is promoted in respective aspects of daily life and thereby effective use of time can be promoted for users. For example, if a person desires to have breakfast at 7 a.m., the power supply of electric rice cooker is turned on to start the operation thereof to complete the cooking of rice only when a person sets the completion time of rice cooking of the rice cooker to 7 a.m.
However, in the current situation, effective use of a user cannot be promoted in some cases even with such progress of computer technology. It is because the operation itself is certainly simplified but a user himself is required to issue the request and execute the settings depending on individual conditions. In regard to the rice cooking, a user has been requested to make the setting to complete the rice cooking at 7 a.m. That is, even when the computer system is mounted, the electric rice cooker itself does not automatically make the setting for the time to complete the rice cooking without any intervention of a user.
On the other hand, such a user request to operate the electric rice cooker to complete the rice cooking at 7 a.m. can be determined based on various factors. When such a user request can be determined with the reasonable probability, the home electric appliances as listed above as well as the electric rice cooker can be totally used with the half-automatic set-up.
For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,577,247 (JP No. 2695542) discloses an apparatus to perform management of user information to execute information process along the property of user. This patent relates to a patterning method for matching of message pattern. Moreover, JP-A-7-261994 discloses a method to customize the software in correspondence between phenomenon and action. This patent relates to classification of the phenomena and actions. This is also a patterning method.
However, in the examples explained above, the apparatus as the operation object of user is diversified and user request for such apparatus are generated with various factors. Therefore, it is difficult to adapt the technology of such patents into various apparatuses because the patterning of user action is limited.
The present invention has an object to provide a structure to totally operate the object apparatus with half-automatic set-up by integrally detecting the operation object apparatus and various factors to generate a user request for such an object apparatus.
According to the present invention, a control information output apparatus stores a dependence information therein. This dependence information indicates whether the application programs to be executed in the object apparatus respectively depend on the predetermined dependence factors or not. This apparatus outputs the control information based on this dependence information.
Here, xe2x80x9capplication program executed in the object apparatusxe2x80x9d means the application program to be installed in various apparatuses and the application program to be installed in the personal computers. That is, the object apparatus is considered in unit of the programs installed in such apparatus. When the object apparatus corresponds to a personal computer, the apparatus may have the structure to be provided within the computer.
Such a profile of considering the object apparatus in unit of the programs installed therein will be explained with an example, where the electric rice cooker and videotape recorder are defined as the object apparatus. In this case, it is assumed that the two application programs A, B are installed in the electric rice cooker and the three application programs C to E are installed in the videotape recorder. Five application programs A to E are executed in the object apparatus. Expression of application program is used here because it is discriminated from the programs such as the operating system to realize the basic operation of the computer system. Moreover, the xe2x80x9capplication programxe2x80x9d used here covers the large scale programs and small scale programs to be executed with the microcomputer built in the home electric appliances to execute the ON/OFF operation of hardware such as a switch or the like.
Moreover, the present invention can also be realized as an information system comprising a control information output apparatus for outputting control information based on the dependence information and a server apparatus for searching the applications based on the control information outputted.
For example, when it is tried to execute the application search such as the video data, for example, it is considered to use the meta-data as the content description data, but in some cases, the data size of such meta-data exceeds 1 K-byte. Therefore, when the search object exceeds the order of several millions, the meta-data communication of the G-byte order is required. Moreover, when users themselves exceed several millions of people, the real-time process becomes impossible in some cases even with the computer having the highest level performance from the viewpoint of the communication infra-structure and communication traffics of database site.
On the other hand, when the application (content) search is performed based on the dependence information, the applications and users may be totally and simply expressed with the concept of the dependence. Moreover, since the amount of data is controlled, high speed search is now possible and thereby highly efficient search can be realized even when extraordinary amount of contents exists in distribution over a plurality of databases.
Moreover, it can also be thought that the user side applications are expressed with the user side dependence information while the server side applications are expressed with the server side dependence information. In this case, the server apparatus operates through inter-relation of the user side and server side applications.
Applications are changing with times and also changes depending on countries and cultures. Meanwhile, the database having mutual operation property can also be used continuously. Therefore, it is difficult for the contents other than that generated on the assumption of the particular services to sort the contents with the application name. However, when idols in the entertainment word, traffic congestion information, news and sightseeing information are considered, the applications for processing such information and viewpoint of user for the contents may be changed but the basic evaluation attribute can be thought to exist as the constant or permanent property.